NNC-FN
NNC-FN (FN = F'inancial '''N'ews) was a U.S. cable TV news network operated by WMFL Corporation from January 26th, 1995 to January 27th, 2005. The network was dedicated to covering financial markets & business news. It was available in a number of markets, including the U.S. & Australia. In Canada, much of it's content was aired on CABN. After years of struggling to attract an audience, WMFL Corporation folded NNC-FN in early 2005. On some U.S. cable TV systems, it's slot was given to NNC International on a full-time basis; previously, NNC International filled NNC-FN's schedule in late-nights & weekends. The last few hours of NNC-FN's last day was, in fact, NNC International programming, as NNC-FN's programming itself ended for good at Noon ET. NNC has decided recently to bring back a business channel & has done so under NNC Business & a business channel for the world called NNC World Business, both launched on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 6:00 AM ET. Both are currently owned by WMFL Corporation & NNC Business is currently following the footsteps of NNC-FN's era & it's legacy Network history In 1995, NNC were having heated internal discussions about the direction of NNC & it's Business segments. The NNC Adminstration was able to convince WMFL Corporation that letting NNC to start a new channel would be a way to solve both issues. WMFL Corporation kept NNC on-the-air while giving NNC it's own business channel called '''NNC-FN. From the start, NNC-FN struggled to be picked up by local & national cable operators. In 2005, the official NNC-FN network was shut down. However the technologies invented in the early NNC-FN days helped launch NNC & the entire broadcasting industry into a new digital era Schedule The schedule below is taken from the now-defunct site of NNC-FN as of 2001 (only from Monday-12:00 AM on Friday). All the times ET Weekdays * 4:00-6:00 AM: World Business This Morning (LIVE from London) * 6:00-9:00 AM: NNC-FN This Morning * 9:00-9:30 AM: NNC Before Hours * 9:30 AM-12:00 PM: The Wall Street Market Call * 12:00-3:00 PM: NNC's Money Gang * 3:00-4:00 PM: The Street Sweep * 4:00-6:00 PM: NNC's Market Wrap * 6:00-7:00 PM: Moneyline * 7:00-8:00 PM: The Biz * 8:00-9:00 PM: Moneyline (re-broadcast) * 9:00-10:00 PM: The Biz (re-broadcast) * 10:00 PM-2:00 AM: World Business This Morning (LIVE from London) * 2:00-3:00 AM: Moneyline (re-broadcast) * 3:00-4:00 AM: The Biz (re-broadcast) Technological advances NNC-FN inaugurated many innovations on TV & online. Many of these helped the Internet & the broadcasting industry become what they are today. Just a few of these accomplishments include: *The 1st fully digital studio in the world. From the digital cameras to the production room & beyond, the NNC-FN network was the 1st professional broadcasting fully digital studio ever built. Unlike all other studios @ the time, NNC-FN could control all cameras with a single joystick. NNC-FN claimed the joystick operator was a computer trained worker, not a camera operator. To make this happen, NNC - FN worked closely with Avid Systems in creating some of their own 1st generation broadcasting solutions. Additionally NNC-FN & Avid worked with Apple Computer to create a hacked version of the Mac operating system as no other system @ that time could handle the throughput requirements of real-time digital video editing. Due to these advancements, NNC-FN had many issues with labor unions. The unions claimed that the joystick operator should be worth 4 times as much as a normal camera operator & thus unionized workers should be paid accordingly. *The 1st online stock quote engine. NNC-FN worked with S&P Comstock & Townsend to convert what was then a special direct connection to the stock market into a real-time data feed that could be used by the NNC-FN.com website. Prior to this, ticker symbol lookups were typically reserved for private firms & not generally available. *The 1st automated on-air ticker. Other broadcasters were showing a moving ticker, however the data from these were edited & typed by hand. Therefore, the lag time in the data being displayed to a view was unpredictable. NNC-FN was the 1st to automatically tap into the ticker feed & create an engine that would "auto-select" hot stocks & use other prioritization policies to automatically display the most relevant stocks. *The 1st with advertising campaign management. The online advertising market was just being invented while NNC-FN's website was being launched. Prior to NNC-FN, the online advertising market primarily used weighting for ad rotations. This would provide a specific advertiser a percentage of views for each page the ad was displayed. NNC-FN worked with industry leader NetGravity to develop the 1st policy engine that would allow NNC-FN.com to target advertisements based on demographics & other known data points. *The 1st to utilize streaming media with broadcast video. At the time, Real Networks, VDONet & VXtreme were startup companies in the streaming media space. No broadcaster saw the Internet as a viable way to reach their audience & they all believed their content to be too valuable to broadcast over the Internet for free. In late 1996, NNC-FN.com published 1–2 hours of it's programming each day within minutes after the actual show had aired on TV. *The 1st to utilize Layer 7 load balancing to scale. At the time, DNS round-robin with weighted nodes to account for servers with more or less power or connectivity was the only way to scale a web farm. NNC-FN was working closely with Netscape by also helping the write portions of their software which was incorporated into their 2.x product line. Round robin was not fast enough @ taking a server out of rotation when Netscape would crash. Thus NNC-FN worked with a few vendors to implement a Layer 7 solution that would instantly know when a server was up or down. This dramatically increased the speed & quality of the NNC-FN & NNC's websites. *The 1st to fully automate publishing. By working with Lotus Software, NNC-FN was the 1st to use a database back end system to automate the work flow of a publishing system. At that time, even the Wall Street Journal, another startup website, used webmasters to hand convert articles from the editors into HTML & to get them approved by hand through e-mail or visual confirmation from a manager. The web master would then post the story onto the website & edit the referring page to add a link to the new document. NNC-FN worked with Lotus's Domino product to fully automate the draft, approval & auto-publishing of it's articles. The website was completely automated in re-writing it's static home page with the latest stories. As an industry 1st, this method was published in a few major magazines & studies by others. Within months after it's initial deployment, NNC revamped their own website publishing methods & cut it's web master count from 15 to 3 See also * NNC * NSC External links